TDC Ventures

Daily Market Note — 2026-09-22

3 min read

Daily Market Note — 2026-09-22

Market commentary on the global ferrous scrap trade. Not trading advice.

The read

Tuesday brings no new Pakistan shredded print, so the market keeps leaning on the recent evidence. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz thinned sharply and two vessels were attacked, even as Saudi Arabia restarted a major oil pipeline and crude prices eased. The two signals point in different directions and neither should be read as the other resolving.

Pakistan’s imported shredded market remains anchored around $418/MT CFR Port Qasim, with a recent verified range of $417–420/MT. No fresh physical transaction dated 22 September was publicly verified by the research cut-off. Port Qasim’s shipping programme continued to show active vessel movements, including a berth handling imported steel billets from Oman.

Key moves

  • Pakistan imported shredded — no new transaction; anchor near $418/MT CFR, range $417–420/MT.
  • Port Qasim operations — the port’s daily shipping programme lists active container berthing and coal movements, with billet cargo also being discharged; no cancellations reported.
  • Currency and fuel — the Pakistani rupee’s latest completed interbank close is 277.21 per US dollar; petrol rose to PKR 393.75/litre while diesel eased to PKR 422.08/litre.

Freight and shipping

  • Strait of Hormuz: Reuters reported only two trackable commodity vessels transited on Monday, down from ten on Sunday — a fresh low for this episode. Separate attacks on a crude tanker and an LPG tanker crossing the strait were also reported.
  • Saudi pipeline: Saudi Arabia restarted its East-West oil pipeline on 22 September, though full recovery is estimated to take six to eight weeks. Oil prices fell by more than two dollars a barrel toward the high nineties following the restart.
  • Reading the two signals together: a pipeline restart and lower oil prices should not be read as evidence that container freight, insurance, or war-risk costs into Pakistan have normalised — those remain separate and elevated.
  • Port Qasim: the latest public shipping programme shows active vessel movements and no listed cancellations.

Supplier markets

  • UAE: Dubai’s temporary restriction on specified ferrous, copper and aluminium scrap exports remains relevant through 8 October 2026 unless changed, exempted or renewed.
  • EU: the current European Commission draft would exclude Pakistan from EU metal-waste export authorisation after 21 May 2027 if adopted unchanged. The consultation remains open, so this is a draft position, not current law. EU exports of e-waste to non-OECD countries are already prohibited.

Non-ferrous snapshot

Three-month LME copper rose to around $14,750–14,770/MT on strong China demand. Shanghai Metals Market reported base metals broadly mixed at midday, with copper, lead and nickel higher and aluminium and zinc lower.

Glossary

  • CFR — cost and freight; the seller pays ocean freight to the destination port, the buyer carries insurance and transit risk.
  • Port Qasim — Pakistan’s main deep-water import terminal, near Karachi.
  • Shredded (ISRI 211) — processed scrap of consistent size and density, the main containerised grade into Pakistan.
  • PSS / ECS — peak season surcharge / emergency contingency surcharge, temporary carrier charges added to base ocean freight.
  • LME 3M — the London Metal Exchange’s three-month forward reference price, the standard benchmark for base-metal scrap formulas.
  • Non-OECD waste-shipment rules — EU regulations governing which countries outside the OECD may receive specified waste exports, including scrap metal, from EU member states.

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